September 4, 2012

Welcome back from your three-day weekend! That’s assuming you didn’t work all three days because you’re up against some arbitrary deadline. And if you did, maybe you’re thinking you really need a vacation. Today’s property is for you! Thanks very much to Burbed reader Dr. Jim for this superb bivouac in Big Sur!

The essence of Big Sur, an awesome opportunity, to own an amazing Big Sur retreat property. A private & serene location, on 2+ acres with dramatic vistas of the Pacific Ocean, along with the green and gold flowered hills of the rugged Big Sur Coast. This diamond in the rough, a terrific value, property being sold AS-IS. 2728 s. f. main house, is 75% complete, & a separate 480 s. f. cottage.

And here’s why Dr. Jim took the time to share this with you:

Just found your web site – love it!What’s going on with this one? The property history is bizarre.

Property history? What about the tiny little pictures that don’t show the 25% of the house that isn’t complete? Talk about an awesome opportunity… to take on someone else’s money pit!

But Dr. Jim is right. Head over to the Redfin link and check out that property history. We’d include it here, but it goes on for so long that we literally cannot copy it into one screenshot. Instead we’ll send you over there to have a scavenger hunt, where you have to find the not-an-arms-length transaction, the foreclosure, the sale at more than twice the above asking price, and count the exact number of times it went pending.

And then there’s this, back when the property was sold 9 years ago (for more than today’s asking price), when those plans for a “2800 SQ FT DREAM HOME MOSTLY FLAT” hadn’t been acted on yet.

PRIVACY, OCEAN AND CANYON VIEWS WITH THE COMFORT OF PAVED AND GATED ACCESS GARDENS BLOOM WITH FLOWERS ON 2.1 AC. APPROVED PLANS FOR 2800 SQ FT DREAM HOME MOSTLY FLAT. VIEWS OF THE OCEAN AND A NATIONAL PRESERVE WILL GUARANTEE YOU

Will guarantee you what? Argh, this is like reading a mystery and someone tore the last page out of the book! Maybe it’s “If you build it, the foreclosure will come.”

October 30, 2011

You see, Forbes has their new list of the 500 Most Expensive Zip Codes out, and it’s time to see how much of the Real Bay Area (RBA) can Occupy The Forbes Zip List! Since this series is a perennial Burbed favorite, we’re going to devote the next five hundred weekend posts to lovingly analyzing every single aspect of this new set of delicious demographic domicile data.

Today: The Top 50 Most Expensive Zip Codes

Hey wait, come back! This is going to be really good! We’re going to see which zip codes gained or lost ground since last year! Maybe some of them get kicked out of the RBA for this! This is a Burbed exclusive, too, Forbes didn’t bother doing any analysis of their own list changes.

Plus this year’s Forbes feature has the top 50 places show the most expensive house so we’ll link to each listing, plus what you can get for a mere million. That means nothing in the RBA except one crapshack in Los Gatos despite their featuring 20 different “expensive” zips. Ha ha! Our expensive zips are so Special we don’t let any stinking one million dollar properties in!

We also love to catch Forbes in mistakes, so if there’s something more expensive they missed, or if they otherwise screwed up like last year, we’ll be sure to let them know with as much obnoxious chortling good-natured ribbing as possible. It’s going to be awesome!

Updated: And the TRICK is on Forbes for a Burbed Treat! They have screwed up very, very badly. Badly enough that I’m wondering if their (bad, really bad) mistakes made it to the print version of this feature. If anyone has a copy, please let us know in comments.

I’ve grabbed the Days on Market (DOM) from the big table as Burbed readers Divasm and nomadic point out every single zip had a DOM of 200. That’s highly unlikely. Nice going, Forbes! I can’t wait to see if your other numbers disagree too! (Yes, they’re fvcked.)

I’m also putting a break in right after the first entry, because this article is not one of our shorter pieces. And now, here they are! Every Northern California entry in Forbes Top 50!

Oh little town of Atherton
How high we see thee lie
Above thy rich and floodless ditch
You burst with equitie
Yet in they dark streets shineth
No mortgage meltdown mess
The hopes and quips of other zips
Are met in thy address

Oops, Tuscaloosa now listed for $18.9 million. Sorry about that! Are you Astonished?

Also I found this $24M home, listed a month ago. Guess they missed it when putting their article together, since it ran a couple of weeks ago. But Homes of the Rich found it too.

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